Vegas Wedding

I just got back from a crazy weekend in Vegas with a friend/client, Lauren Zuyddyk. I flew in on Friday morning and helped run a few errands, then it was off to the strip for Lauren's bachelorette party. With her grandma, mother, his mother, 2 sisters and a few friends we all went and saw a show called "Tony and Tina's Wedding". It's an improv comedy where the viewers act as guests at the wedding. Crazy and strange things happen as the wedding party and their families get more and more drunk. I don't think it was anything that any of us girls were expecting. But we had fun riding in a limo and hanging out all night with Lauren's new blow-up doll named Fredricko.

Lauren with Fredricko and some happy elves

The trip wasn't all pleasure, it was really a work trip so I spent all of Saturday making the girl's hair look nice. There was a little bit of a rush at the end of getting everyone ready but everyone got done on time and looked beautiful! I was so happy with how Lauren's hair turned out that I spent the whole night admiring it.

It took an army to help Lauren ready and into her beautiful lace dress

Putting on the vail just before the walk down the aisle. 

(I burnt myself with my curling iron that morning, that isn't a hickey ;)

They were married in a little chapel on the Vegas strip

Congrats Lauren and Adam Zuyddyk!

There were about 23 wedding guests at the cute, short, 12 minute ceremony. The reception was in a huge suite at the Mandalay Bay, with an amazing view of all the lights on the strip. They had a fajita bar catered in and wedding cake with a snowboarder couple as a cake topper.

I'm very thankful that I was able to go share in this fun weekend. Squirt on the other hand, didn't love every part of the trip. I was on my feet for a lot of the time which lead to some painful toe cramps, sciatic nerve pain shooting up and down my back and some limping from my hip hurting. But all in all we made it and it's good to be home with my feet up.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thought I would take a minute to write down a few things I am thankful for:

~ a loving, hard working and caring husband
~ a wonderful church and church family (that I got to share thanksgiving dinner with today)
~ the little miracle forming in my belly and for the surprises that are to come
~ my supportive family and that we all get along so well
~ that Grandpa Koenes is cancer free and for the health of all the people I hold dear to me
~ financial security and that I work two jobs that I love
~ that I have a wonderful Savior that I can thank

This year for Thanksgiving Matt, Meredith and I went to our friend's, the Mosers, house. We were joined by the Bynum and the Diaz families, along with the Mosers' grandparents and sister. We had a ton of great food and really great company.

Yummy! As you can see my friend Charity Moser is also pregnant at the same time as me! Due in February.

Being crazy as usual.

Some of our Thanksgiving feast!

20 weeks and growing...

Video Difficulties

A number of people have said that they have been having problems watching the videos on our blog.  I just wanted to let everyone know that the problems have been rectified and all videos will now be hosted on Vimeo instead of YouTube of Blogspot.  


Also, all the videos are now iOS friendly... meaning all iPods, iPhones, and iPads should be able to view the vids in their respective mobile browsers problem free.


m@


Update: Apparently Vimeo is having problems with the embedded mobile vids, but they are working on it.  If you're trying to watch a video, then simply tap the "vimeo" logo in the video frame and it will take you to the video on their mobile site and it will play there.

Skiing is Getting Better

The snow has been falling up the mountains and that means more terrain has been opening at the ski resorts.  Nearly all the resorts are open now, but many with limited ski-able terrain.  Keystone and Vail have the most, but more is opening daily.  I chose to hit up Keystone since I only get 10 days to use at Vail and didn't want to waste one when I couldn't ski the areas I like.

Keystone got 4" of new snow overnight and was still cloudy when I got there at 9am for opening.  Since it's a holiday week and a lot of the kids are off school for the entire week in CO, it was pretty busy already.    As the day went on the clouds moved out and it was sunny and blue skies.  The crowd started to thin at lunchtime and made it for some great skiing.

I tried some new ways of mounting my helmet cam since there wasn't anyone else to video and made a little video from it.  I think it turned out pretty cool.

Keystone 11-22-11 from Matt Colvin on Vimeo.

Tried some new mounting techniques for my helmet cam. I think it turned out pretty cool.

View of North Peak @ Keystone

Breckenridge in the distance

m@

Praise God

Praise God for answered prayers! After Grandpa's surgery, last Wednesday, he had a few set backs in the hospital. He had a couple days of abnormal bleeding and some brain confusion and an allergic reaction from some meds he was on. But yesterday they took away his saline drip and oxygen and started him on food! Everyone says he's back to his old self and he can't stop thinking about eating Thanksgiving dinner.

Our family has so much to be thankful for this thanksgiving. Grandpa found out yesterday that they were able to remove all the cancerous cells from his colon with just the surgery. He will not be needing chemo at this time. They plan to send him home today or tomorrow, just in time for the holiday. They will watch him more closely with another colonoscopy next year to be sure he is still cancer free.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers for our family, God has truly blessed us over the years. Grandpa's pain from surgery has gone away and he will continue to heal fully now. I think he looks forward to going home and getting back to his normal life. At this time, each year, Grandma and Grandpa decorate 3 Christmas trees in their house. One of the trees holds so many Precious Moment ornaments that they have no extra branches and they have to wire it to the ceiling so it won't fall over!

Cabin Weekend with Friends

Mel and I headed up the mountains for a relaxing weekend with our friends, Mark and Jammie Barrington. The cabin is just south of Leadville near Weston Pass.  The scenery was amazing and the cabin was comfortable and cozy.  We did some snowshoeing, lots of eating, played some games, shared great conversation, and did plenty of relaxing.  Check out the pics!

Enjoying the snow

Either she's imitating Home Alone or she's petrified I'm gonna land on her

All the jumping made me tired.... at 5:15pm

Great view of Mt. Elbert and Mt. Massive

Deer roaming around the property

m@

20 Week Ultrasound

This morning was our 20-week US and Squirt cooperated for the most part.  After a bunch of squirming around while the US Tech was trying to take pictures and measurements, Squirt settled down for a nap at exactly the wrong time.  The position the baby was lying in made it pretty difficult to get anymore good pictures, but after Melissa got up and jumped around a little bit the pictures turned out just fine.


We also learned that our baby is extraordinarily average.  Squirt placed exactly in the 50th percentile in every measurement.  The US Tech estimated Squirt's weight to be around 10-11 ounces and the heart rate was 144.


The tech told us that she was able to see if Squirt was a boy or girl, but didn't tell us since we had decided to not find out.  It'll just have to be a surprise for everyone.


Get ready cause this is only the start of the kid pics.  I'm sure I'll burn out at least a few cameras in this kid's lifetime!

Right foot

View of Squirt's face

Nap time

Hand on forehead

Already a thumb sucker

Videos:

Squirt in the Fetal Position from Matt Colvin on Vimeo.

Tough to see, but it starts in the foreground and you can see Squirt's forearm, then moves back and you can see that the baby is lying with arms and legs tucked in while sleeping.

Squirt's Nap Time from Matt Colvin on Vimeo.

Squirt sucking his thumb and fidgeting while hunkered down for a nap

m@

A glance at last week

What has been going on in the last week?

Wednesday 

Matt picked up an extra midnight shift at work, he started his work week a day early. In the last 8 days he worked a total of 90.5 hours! In addition to his hard work he was able to catch up on all his latest anime shows and read 2 entire books.

Thursday

There was an emergency at the Y with a man who fell back into the pool when he was trying to exit. He took in a lot of water and needed to be rescued. I was the second guard on the scene and had to push the alarm button. After being taken away in the ambulance he is doing well. 

Also, on Thursday I starting feeling lots of fluttering from little Squirt. He is starting to make himself known and I love it!

Friday

Meredith, her friend and I went downtown to 16th Street Mall (google it, it's a cool place) to check out the first ever H&M store in Denver. It was huge, busy and beautiful but we bought nothing....

Saturday

We went on a double (blind) date with a cousin's friend who moved from MI to CO 5 years ago and is due with their first born in April as well. It was fun getting to know them and we hope to get together again soon. It's really nice to have someone who is in the exact same stage of pregnancy as I am. (Thanks Stephanie)

That night when we got home from dinner I was sitting on the couch with my hand on my bump and I felt my fingers move with the same movement I felt in my belly! It was the first kick that I know of! It's possible Squirt was kicking before but I didn't know what it was and chalked it up to gas or flutters.

Monday 

I woke up with more energy then I've felt since August and used it doing 5 loads of laundry, making a yummy dinner and starting dinner in the CrockPot of the next night.

Tuesday

I was feeling in the Christmas mood, even though I'm not allowed to celebrate before Thanksgiving I made Matt his favorite cutout cookies and listened to Justin Beiber's new Christmas Album.

Wednesday

Grandpa Koenes had a cancerous tumor removed from his colon. Surgery went well, the evening was a little drama filled but he is back to his old skin color and funny self. Please continue to pray for his recovery since he is in some pain and pray that the tests show that he is cancer free. The results should come in on Monday and if they weren't able to remove it all he will have to start chemo.

Thursday (Today)

There was an audit at the Y while I was the guard on the stand. The pretend victim appeared to be in trouble but I saw her take many breaths which confused me. After figuring out what was going on I jumped in and made the rescue. These random test we have 4 times a year really help put into perspective how important our jobs really are. I know I didn't do everything perfectly but I gained a lot of confidence in myself.

Tonight Matt and I will be going to watch Breaking Dawn, the newest Twilight movie, at midnight. I hope I can stay awake, I've been since 5:30 this morning.

Tomorrow we go to the doctor's for our 20 week ultrasound! I can't wait to see how much Squirt has grown! Video and pictures to come soon.  

Bored at Work

I'm sitting here at work and I'm bored. Not looking forward to tomorrow night knowing its going to be insane. Holiday weekends, while wonderful, tend to make work really crappy when all the surgeons try to make up for lost time and cram the surgery schedule full.

In the meantime, I get to stare at my computer screens for the next 8 hours.

I promise it's just as boring as it looks

 

m@

Squirt's Registry and the Holiday Season

Our registries are complete, WOW Squirt needs so much! 

Click on the following links to view them:

Amazon.com registry

Babies "R" Us registry

After lots of research from the web, friends, and family we have completed our registries for Squirt! With so many friends and family members living so far away, we thought it would be best to register online at Amazon.com with the option to ship to us and at Babies "R" Us with the option to ship to the store by our house or right to our home. There are many things at Amazon.com that they didn't have at B"R"Us so they aren't exactly the same. We currently have Amazon Prime which gives us free shipping and since many of the items on Amazon are cheaper, we would rather purchase things on there if needed.

We wanted to do our registries early so we can update things as we need and not have to just throw one together quickly before my showers. A good friend has offered to throw me a shower in Colorado on Saturday, Feb 4th, which I'm really looking forward to. We are also planning showers for the last weekend in February, when Matt and I are back in Michigan for a friend's wedding. We haven't narrowed down the dates for all of them yet, but we know we will be in MI from February 23-29.  All these dates seem so far away but with the holidays approaching I know the time will fly by.

Speaking of flying, we have just booked flights to visit MI in December! Thanks to the generosity of Matt's parents we will be there the week before Christmas, since Matt has to work the holidays again this year. We will be there from December 15-21. We are currently in the process of planning Matt's 30th birthday celebration, a Red Wings game at the Joe, and 3 Christmas parties! I love the business of the holiday season! Let's hope Squirt and Matt will feel the same way this year. For some reason I'm already in the Christmas spirit, but we have rules in the Colvin house that we celebrate one holiday at a time. Matt gets mad if any Christmas music or decorations are on/out before Thanksgiving.

Before I get in to much trouble I better focus on Thanksgiving instead of Christmas since it comes first. This year for Thanksgiving we will have a traditional turkey dinner at our friend's house with anywhere from 4-11 people. Much to my pleasure I've found out that the Moser's enjoy the same family traditions that I do! We are planning to go around the table and share what we are thankful for, I better start thinking about what to share now or the list could be endless! We have so much to be thankful for this year! 

I'm forever thankful for such a fun and loving family that I will miss very much during the holidays. I've been noticing more and more lately how much I take for granted their unconditional love, support, and health. Next week on November 17th my mom's dad, Grandpa Koenes, will be have a cancerous tumor removed from his colon. Please keep him, the doctors, and my family in your prayers. We pray that the tumor is contained, that the cancer hasn't spread, and that the surgeons are able to remove all of it. The "C word" has never come up in my family so it is a very scary time for us. We know that God has a plan in mind and we are trying to rely on our faith to calm the fear and worry.

Beginnings of a Nursery

I originally planned to head up the mountains to be present for opening day at Keystone Ski Resort this past Friday, but I changed my mind and decided to stay home and spend the day with my wife instead.  Naturally, this meant we would go to Ikea... which is exactly what we did.


From my experience with Ikea furniture, I knew it could be somewhat wobbly so I was very proud that the dresser we wanted seemed quite sturdy when I tried to rock it on the showroom floor during a previous shopping trip.  When we got there we went to make sure that they still had what we wanted and I decided to give the display a good shake again just to be sure.  Again, I was amazed at how the piece didn't budge despite the amount of raw man power I was using.  At this point I decided to look at the footings of the dresser to see what gave it such amazing stability and realized that it had been bolted to the floor.  On the plus side, I don't feel as weak now.


Anyway, I managed to get Melissa out of there without getting any meatballs and back home so I could start assembly on the furniture.  I did the majority of the construction in the same fashion that I try to do most things around my house... without pants.  Following are pics of the completed pieces (all of which I'm wearing pants in).  Nothing fancy, but I think the white pieces look good in a green room (I doubt our U o fM family members will think so).  Hahahahahahaha!  Melissa said she'd never put our kid in MSU colors, but I guess they can sleep in a room with the same colors?  On a side note, the dresser turned out to be quite sturdy without me having to bolt it to the floor!

Assembling the Dresser

Book shelf

Dresser

More of Grandma's homemade goodies

  m@